While the team was released and continued their journey onward to Kenya, Vintage Air Rally (VAR) organisers announced on Facebook on Friday that Kirk was a no-show. However, he turned up several hours later.

“Maurice is safe! We heard he had an engine failure and landed (not at an airfield) in South Sudan but had a puncture on landing,” an update said on Saturday.

“Locals found him and called a Brit in Juba they recently worked for. He contacted the British embassy in Juba.”

Kirk, who dubs himself the Flying Vet because of his days as a veterinarian, is a colourful character with a penchant for adventure and mishap.

In 2005 he was injured when he crash-landed in Japan on a solo bid to fly around the world in a vintage plane and in 2008 he crashed in the Caribbean. He was rescued then by US coastguards, and to express his gratitude he later dropped in on the Texas ranch of former US president George Bush and was briefly placed in a psychiatric clinic.

Maurice KirkCredit:
Pat Wellenbach/AP

While pilots of 1920s and 1930s vintage biplanes set off on 12 November from Crete on their 13,000 kilometre (8,000-mile) journey to Cape Town, Kirk joined on Sunday in his 1943 Piper Cub plane.

Event director Sam Rutherford said Kirk was told to fix his plane after he suffered engine failure in Khartoum and it was on his next flight that he first got lost.

“At that stage we found out that his primary GPS was not working, his compass wasn’t working and he didn’t actually know how to use his backup GPS. Also he had left all of his maps in the hotel in Khartoum so he had no real means for navigating,” Rutherford said.

“Maurice does have something of an interesting history ... It is very impressive that he is able to do what he does aged 72. I am very keen to give anyone a chance, an opportunity to do something as magical as the vintage air rally. It is, though, becoming true that it was perhaps mistaken to have accepted him,” he added.

Aside from Kirk’s antics, the rally has seen plenty of drama. Rutherford said a last-minute problem with flight permits led to them being detained in Ethiopia as it was too late to inform teams who had already taken to the skies.

“We were held in the airport, we weren’t allowed any contact with the outside world, our mobile phones were confiscated, no requests for consular assistance were allowed,” he said. “We ended up sleeping on concrete floors and some of our teams are over 70 years old, and in very hot buildings with no mosquito protection in a malaria zone.”